Double Crescents

Have you ever seen planet Venus in its crescent phase? The phases of Venus are the different variations of lighting seen on the planet’s surface, similar to lunar phases. As framed in this telephoto image the young Moon meets with planet Venus in the early evening sky, about 2 weeks before Venus conjunction with the sun. When Venus is near its inferior conjunction with the sun (close to the position of the sun in our sky) it becomes a thin crescent but since it reaches its closest distance to the Earth it also shows its largest apparent size. The crescent can be easily seen even through a small binocular. Venus disc is small as only 10 arc seconds when its at full phase but its apparent diameter enlarges 6 times to about one arc minute (the Moon is about 30 arc minutes wide) when it is a thin crescent. In 1610 Galileo made the first observations of phases of Venus through his small telescope. However the extreme crescent phase of Venus has been (rarely) observed today with the naked eye but there is no confirmed pre-telescopic record of it in the history. Also interesting in the above image is the difference in surface brightness of Venus and Moon. while Moon is much brighter in total magnitude, it seems less shiny than the dazzling Venus because of the Moon’s much larger apparent size.